Facebook snags the guy who built Google's Chrome OS
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Put these two new people together with Firefox co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, brought to Facebook almost three years ago and Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor, the creators of Gmail, Adsense and Friendfeed, acquired just under one year ago, and what do you get? A monster team with the experience to create a compelling, fully wrap-around internet experience for hundreds of millions of users.
Also am I the only one who finds it a little odd that Facebook sends out press alerts about which engineers it snagged from which companies? I understand why some people - or at least, some websites - would care, it just all sounds so silly in the end.
If touch tablets ends up upending the netbook category, then Chrome OS won't really have a home. It doesn't have the capability of taking advantage of advanced hardware, and netbook functionality might be fully accounted for by Android tablets. Chrome OS was an interesting bet in the direction of computing (smaller, inexpensive notebooks as the norm for Internet consumption and light office work), but things might not pan out the way Chrome's founders had thought.
Except it turns out that obsolete stuff like local storage and direct hardware access and being able to run offline is actually sort of useful, which is why everybody is falling over themselves trying to jam all of it into HTML5.
I assume that Chrome OS will completely sync with Chrome on the desktop. This means that if you're working on your web-based apps on your computer, you'll be able to pick up your Chrome tablet and seamlessly continue the work and then switch back again.
In other words: what do Chrome OS's limitations add to the experience? It's interesting from a technical standpoint to build a fully-functioning system with Chrome OS's limitations, but how does it make a better product?
If that is true, then Chrome will certainly be violating the spirit if not the letter of software - "free software" that only allows you to do things on server controlled by someone else...
It is _exactly_ what I've wanted since netbooks came into existence, and I've put a lot of hours into setting up stripper Arch setups that do this.
Is it better than anything else on paper? No, but on paper isn't the only way to measure things (to the chagrin of us engineers). Sometimes less is more.
I don't know if the world needs another browser, but maybe Facebook is working on one?
I believe Facebook is entering that phase now where they'll have tons of money to throw at these guys with promises of working on "the next big thing". Expect these guys to leave after 3-4 years for smaller more progressive ventures.
Google had 2,668 employees in September 2004, just after it IPO'd, and at the beginning of 2010 it had about 20,000.
eBay IPO'd in September 1998 with only about 30 employees and revenues of $4.7 million. In 2008 it had about 16,000.
Facebook will definitely IPO at some point, its VCs will demand it, and this recruit is perhaps more for IPO marketing than anything else. It now claims to have 1400+ staff.
http://investor.google.com/corporate/faq.html#employees http://www.swivel.com/workbooks/27740-Google-Number-of-emplo... http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?factsheet
Perhaps they'll create a similar thing from scratch.
To be as gifted as Matt appears to be, you have to have a deep love for what you do. And with that love, I would hope comes a sense of pride and ownership in your work. I just couldn't fathom walking away from something like Chrome OS to work at Facebook.
I imagine Facebook gave him one heck of an offer. But if there is anything I've learned in the short time I've been a devloper and the even shorter amount of time I've been reading HN, it's that people who truly love what they do in this industry don't always go for the gold. And even if he is dirven by financial gain, I can't imagine he was wanting for much of anything working at Google, so why the switch?
I think the financial motivation is pretty extreme for a top engineer like this. He can probably retire after Facebook goes public if he wants to.
Just guessing, of course.
Smart people: yes that's nice.
Look good on resume later: sure.
Zillions of employees and a big inherited culture/system and heirarchy with skads of established products and infrastructure that you parachute into: no thanks!
Edit: It does indeed run a new windowing system, but details are scant on this blog entry: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-ch...
Why does Google feel the need to dominate every corner of our Internet experience? Is it because their eventual business model is to wrap ads on all content everywhere? Facebook's business model is to add every physical item to the social graph, so I suppose there are natural conflicts there.
In short, because they can expand there and expect to succeed since the fields are closely related, and any short comings can be fixed by throwing money at them.
Yes, Google is trying to own the internet from the power lines it runs on, the air waves it transmits on, to the machines used to access it.
Why do you think Henry Ford owned a steel mill? Do you think that he shouldn't have entered the steel market and just bought steel from the existing mills?
This is something distinct from Buzz, Orkut, etc?
Facebook is increasingly becoming "the internet" for a lot of people. They interact with businesses there, communicate with peers, keep up on what is new, enjoys games and entertainment, etc. Facebook, without doubt, wants to be your internet. They want to wrap their ads around everything you can do.
Google is the same. As is Microsoft. As is Apple. As is everyone else.